I built myself a strong mac in august, and I've added a windows 8 HD to it.

I'm pretty surprised at "the truth" about 8. I was a critic of the metro thing after reading about it.

After two installs-- a 3 year old laptop and my new desktop with 32 GB ram, thunderbolt, etc here is what I've learned.

1) metro: a few clicks and the open source "classic shell" and you never see it again.

2) it's cheap. till Jan anyway. If you have or can borrow a laptop bought since June, you can have a copy for 15 bucks, otherwise 40. I know it should be 20.

3) It runs everything win7 does, just as fast, and it's quite a bit more secure if you want it to be.

Since the deal is on the pro version--well it's worth considering, just to have around before the retail prices go back to stupid.

Sure I prefer the multiple desktops of Mountain Lion. But don't let all the noise about 8 mislead you, as it did me. If you have 2 gigs of ram on any windows machine, and know a little bit about installing things, it's worth upgrading, IMHO.

My old laptop battery life is double what it did on win7--exactly why I'm not sure.

Agree about the mixed/bad press on Windows 8. One click and your out of Metro and in the normal OS. Windows 8 has a lot to offer and is an upgrade over Windows 7 in most areas. Saying that, Windows 7 is awesome and extremely stable.
Actually Windows 8 is faster than Windows 7. The Adobe programs especially. If you dual boot between 7 & 8, you will end up in 8 just for the speed.

I downloaded Win 8 for $15 and installed it on my i3 8GB laptop. With an SSD as the main drive, the thing just screams!

It boots in seconds, switches tiles and windows immediately - it is like having a brand new laptop.

The Metro interface looks like it will be great on a tablet or touchscreen. I actually like tiles for a few things on the laptop - I have multiple email accounts set up in the same tile, it is a very simple, easy to use, easy to switch accounts, a clean interface. I also like the Weather tile, and other things like that where you want to just "tab" in (I use the "Window" key).

There actually is an application in the store already, too, that will allow you to have multiple applications open within 1 tile window.

Then once you switch to the Desktop, you are right back in a Windows 7 style interface. Perfect.

Small tip: When you go to download Win 8 from the web site for $15 - if you "have purchased a new laptop in the past 2 months" - you only need to enter the name of the store and the name of the laptop that you purchased. They will send you an email for a $25 discount on Win 8.

Also FWIW, I just bought a HP Pavilion Sleekbook 14" laptop today from Best Buy. It is .8 inches thick, 4 pounds, i3 Ivy Bridge, 4GB RAM, 500 GB hard drive. Price was $399, which is pretty good! It is $589-$30=$559 at the HP web site, $530 at Amazon.

It does have a 4 cell battery, which is smaller than the usual 6. It is supposed to last 4 hours 15 mionutes through. 2 USB 3.0 ports, 1 USB 2.0, HDMI. No CD/DVD drive though.

I have hand and arm pain, so I wanted small and light. I had planned on buying a tablet once something like the Surface tablet with full Win 8 came out, but the base tablet was $600, so this was a good price.

I find that my other i3 8GB laptop runs CS6 Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Illustrator, and Lightroom 4.0 quite well. I plan to add 16GB to this one for $54 (Gskill fgrom NewEgg.)

Several issues with C17 and WIn8. First, no tethered shooting with a 1Dx even though the release notes say it's possible. Second, when importing images from a CF card, it freezes every single time and requires going into the task manager and stopping the program and then restarting it. Strangely, there are times when all the images I am importing are there even though it has frozen about half way though.
About to start editing yesterdays shoot and hoping I don't find any more bugs. I think they released this one a bit early but I am sure they are working on the issues as people report them.

Do I hate the continuous swapping back and forth from start to desktop; from browser to browser; is IE10 blazing fast; is it a royal PITA to use? Answers to all of those are emphatically YES - but it's emphatically faster too. LR & PS are friggin' blazing fast. That alone was worth the money.

I will agree also on Windows 8. I have been running it since the consumer preview and have been enjoying it. I now have a Windows Surface tablet and Windows Phone 8. I was at a Microsoft development conference and they have a lot of great features already in there and some new ones coming out. I am looking forward to some of the new touch monitors that are coming out. Some of them will slide down so they can be used more like a tablet. Just imagine using your 27" monitor as a tablet to do photo editing The new UI does take some time getting used to it, but I think they have made it easier for the end user to get information.

I have also started using their Skydrive storage more and the integration that has with all of their devices is really good.

when did you last have virus? when did anyone last have one? and if you got one was it self inflicted - eg. warez? i cant remember when i had one... maybe back in win98 dayz Its Mac hype, scare mongering!

I am a staunch Windows defender but this is just blatantly WRONG. I would estimate that between 25-50 percent of Windows machines are infected with something. Some more malicious than others but they are infected nonetheless. And you don't have to be a pirate to get infected. My daughters and my wife have both bolloxed up their PC's with malicious crap and none of them visit Pirate Bay. Here's a little eye opener for you:

Any system that is connected to the internet or accesses data from other machines connected to the internet are vulnerable. This includes machines running Windows, Unix, Linux and Mac OS. Windows gets the most attention because a majority of personal computers run on Windows. Also, most computer users are not very tech savvy, do not run or maintain virus protection software, will click on random links or visit unsavory websites, and ignore UAC messages even if it is turned on without having any idea of the risks involved.

That being said, it is fairly easy to avoid malware infection by using common sense practices:

1. Use av/antimalware software and make sure it updates automatically. Also keep your OS up to date with current security patches.
2. Do not click on links (from known or unknown senders) if you don't know where the link will take you. Do not run executable files if you are not sure what it does (warez).
3. Do not use the admin account as your daily driver. In Windows/Unix/Linux it is trivially easy to run programs with elevated privileges when needed without being logged in as admin.
4. Use a router as a firewall and keep its firmware up to date.
5. Use strong passwords to protect your accounts.
6. Make backup images of your system partition every few weeks using Windows built-in backup or any number of free or commercial software available. This way, even if you lose your system to malware you can delete the old partition and reimage from your last backup in a 1/2 hour or so. Obviously, this also protects you from hardware failure of the system drive.

I can't remember the last time I had a machine infected at home, Windows, Unix or Linux. Over the last year or more I have also been using Linux (or Win) virtual machines to connect to the internet, which keeps my activities confined to a secure sandbox. While these measures do not guarantee 100% security, they remove a majority of common threats that exist today, and vastly decrease the odds of your system getting compromised. Its not really a Windows problem, its a user problem.

raw shooter wrote:
Agree about the mixed/bad press on Windows 8. One click and your out of Metro and in the normal OS. Windows 8 has a lot to offer and is an upgrade over Windows 7 in most areas. Saying that, Windows 7 is awesome and extremely stable.
Actually Windows 8 is faster than Windows 7. The Adobe programs especially. If you dual boot between 7 & 8, you will end up in 8 just for the speed.

I used 8 RC for a while, and I liked it. But I'm going to wait for 6 months or so before switching because Windows 7 has been rock solid and I would prefer the initial bugs to be worked out before I move to 8. Windows has come a long way from ME!